And to be frank, I have too many good things to say about VS Code, so I’ll give you the summary: it’s beautiful, it works, and it works well. It’s still missing a few minor features, but give it another 6–12 months and I’m confident it will steal the throne from both Atom and Sublime Text.

One of the downsides is that it can’t export to DOC, RTF, PDF, or any other kind of document format, but it does export to HTML (either Plain HTML or Styled HTML). Another downside is that changing the font and theme requires editing text files instead of just selecting options in a menu.

The interface is a bit clunky at times, but the notes do support rich text formatting and the search functionality is pretty advanced (e.g. you can search in one page, all sub-pages, the entire notebook, etc). Highly recommended if OneNote or Evernote are too bulky for you.

Greenshot simply sits in your system tray. You can assign various hotkey shortcuts for taking different kinds of screenshots, including Capture Screen, Capture Region, and Capture Window. You can customize the output format, toggle cursor capture, and more. Very fast and very useful.

If you ever need to record your screen (e.g. to make a tutorial video), my strongest recommendation is to use OBS Studio. It’s 100% free, it’s actively developed, it’s packed full of settings and features, and it doesn’t unnecessarily suck up system resources.

HandBrake is a tool that takes any video file and converts it into any other video format. It can handle dozens of outputs, supports batch conversions, and can even use DVDs and Blu-rays as source inputs (non-DRM only). Want to include chapter markers, subtitles, or video filters? It can do that.

My favorite aspect of HandBrake is two-fold: one, it’s 100% free but has the performance and polish of a commercial-grade program, and two, it’s easy to use with a straightforward interface. A must-have app for anyone who creates or downloads a lot of videos.

No more of that. Now you can switch to Elpis, which is a completely free way to listen to Pandora without a Pandora One account. The interface lacks a bit in the usability department, but isn’t so bad that it’ll frustrate you or anything.

VLC Media Player needs no introduction — it appears on every “best media players for Windows” article on the internet and I’m sure anyone who has an internet connection has heard of this app by now. What surprised me is that it’s actually on GitHub!

GitHub Is Changing the World

Without a doubt, GitHub has made its mark on the world and continues to do so. According to Alexa, it’s the 54th most-visited website in the world (and even though Alexa rankings are shoddy at best, that still says a lot) and most of that growth was in 2016.